Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Steve Jobs (2015)

Jack and I think this is good, despite it not being true to its subject--they get the prickly part, but leave out the ex-hippie/charismatic guy who helped change our world. Michael Fassbender (last blogged in X-Men: Days of Future Past) is very good as the total jerk title character denying paternity of his daughter and bullying everyone in his path, Kate Winslet (most recently in Labor Day) wonderful as his long-suffering "work wife" Joanna Hoffman, and Seth Rogen (last in This Is the End) terrific as beleaguered Steve Wozniak. There's a short piece in The New Yorker (it has a few mild spoilers of good lines) about Rogen meeting Wozniak which I found interesting. And a longer one in the L.A. Times, with fewer spoilers, about how they got it wrong.

Also featured are Jeff Daniels (most recently in The Martian) as John Sculley and Katherine Waterston (first blogged in Inherent Vice) as Jobs' baby mama.

Full disclosure--when we saw it two weeks ago we were late, which we seldom are, by two minutes or ten, and the number 1984 was superimposed on the screen when we walked in. But we didn't feel lost. What I learned tonight is that the first act, 1984, was shot in 16mm film, the second, 1988, in 35mm, and the last, 1988, in digital, to reflect changing technology.

Danny Boyle (last blogged for Trance) directs from a typically wordy script by Aaron Sorkin (most recently in these pages for Moneyball).

I loved the score by Daniel Pemberton (plenty of movie and TV credits but new to me), which can be streamed from this link.

Rotten Tomatoes' folks (85% critics/78% audiences) agree with us that it's entertaining, which is way better than they liked the Ashton Kutcher-starring 2013 movie Jobs. This one is still playing locally, and the DVD release is estimated for February 2016.

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